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Passion Presents Itself

Circumstance does not make the man, it reveals him.

—James Allen

Anybody can perform a task that he or she already knows and understands. It’s when obscurity, doubt, and stress are interjected into the equation against the backdrop of survival that the creature of the unknown exposes us for who we are, not just what we know how to do.

The circumstances that tested me appeared on a number of different occasions, and each one seemed to question how badly I wanted to press on. Each episode created yet another façade of disbelief that deeply tested my resolve, to which I bluntly answered the call every time—at least I like to think so—and that’s a question that passion answers.

Coronado, CA, April 2000: Hell Week

Despite kicking and screaming from my parents, I finally enlisted in the Navy on April 19, 2000—with a BUD/S contract. I am not going to rattle off another story from SEAL training, as there are plenty of books out there that will do just that. However, certain milestones within my BUD/S experience are important to highlight because they underline the value of passion in one’s life endeavor.

The third week of BUD/S was hell week—a significant milestone in the SEAL training pipeline that separates the weak-minded from the purpose-driven. It is a tool used to select the right people. In hell week, students are cold, wet, tired, and miserable for five and a half days with a maximum of four hours of sleep the whole week. Scientists say that anything greater than 120 hours of sleeplessness causes permanent brain damage. Hell week is up to 120 hours—that’s how far we like to push the envelope.

Hell week is daunting, to say the least. But it is also an incredible experience that shapes SEAL wannabes into knowing—not just believing—that the human mind is the most powerful weapon that anybody can possess. You learn that the only human limitations are those that you place on yourself, and that failure is only determined by where you choose to stop.

However, hell week was only the third week of training, and it didn’t seem like the instructor staff had given us the secret thought-recipe to making it through yet (they weren’t particularly friendly at that point in time). My question back then was, If hell week is the third week, what the hell comes after that?

On Saturday, or hell week eve, you sleep as much as possible, which really ends up being no more than normal. You eat and rest because come five o’clock Sunday evening, your new day begins, and it’s going to be a looooong 120-hour day. At five o’clock Sunday evening, our class shuffled over to the BUD/S compound where we lay in tents, awaiting an unknown time at which hell week would begin. There were a few things that ran through my mind while I lay in wait for the M60 machine gun bursts to start, which was the signal from the instructors that hell week has begun, such as: How have they (the instructor staff) prepared me for this? This week was more difficult than the first, my legs feel like anchors, and I feel like I just played a football game with no pads. How am I supposed to feel fresh? Does anyone else feel fresh? What mental tools do they have? God, this is really gonna suck.

My mental position at the time was one of entitlement in that I expected them (the instructors) to give me something cognitive that would ensure success. Obviously, that wasn’t the case for a number of reasons, the most important one being that nobody gives you anything you don’t already have; they just offer you opportunities to unlock it from its dusty, never-been-used-before mental warchest.

Ka-booom!

Bap-bap-bap-bap-bap-bap-bap…! Explosions and automatic weapons fire sounded off.

“Get the hell outta the tents!”

“Wake up! Move your asses!” screamed the instructor staff. “Move! Move! Move!”

It was game time.

The explosions and heavy put-put-puttering of the M60 machine guns officially commenced the beginning of hell week. At that point, it was pure chaos.

All the trainees ran out of their calm, quiet tents right into pandemonium—an instantaneous shift from something so simple into something extremely complex. Instructors were yelling and throwing grenade simulators that were going off all around us; smoke, explosions, and, worst of all, water hoses were everywhere. From the moment you exited the tent until you finished five and half days later (if you made it), you were cold, wet, miserable, and tired. The whole time.

It was miserable. To this day, I do not get in cold water and I hate swimming. No joke.

But, as time slowly idled by that week and more and more classmates quit—guys who I thought would make it through—I began to realize that their mental weakness was a choice derived from a temporary state of unpleasantness. If there was one thing I learned from hell week, it was that nothing lasts forever. If you can focus on an alternate, temporary reward, then the short-term pain of now will dissipate, and you’ll ultimately reach your long-term goal, whatever that may be. What you focus on is what you get, and I chose to focus on short-term, temporary wins that garnered long-term success. I did this by separating each training evolution over the course of a day into its own individual routine with its own focus, as if it were the last task to do for that day and nothing else mattered. Short-term goals act as a mental bridge toward a far-away destination (long-term goals), allowing you to not only align yourself toward your end state but also to give your mental and emotional faculties relief. Put another way, it was easier to aim toward the next meal that was just four hours away than to imagine being awake for five days straight. Plus, the thought of spending the rest of my enlistment on a ship was enough to keep myself in check. Conversely, quitters only focused on the immediate pain of what was currently in front of them.

Monday came and I wasn’t feeling too tired. Then Monday night. Then Tuesday morning. By the time Tuesday afternoon rolled around, I was in Zombieland. I mentally checked out. My mind had accepted the current level of discomfort that we were enduring, and there was no way I was going anywhere except into Wednesday. Everywhere you run in hell week is with your BUD/S class, which consists of boat crews that yield five to seven individuals each. Each boat crew carries a small inflatable boat on the head of each member, anywhere and everywhere the class travels. I remember running back from chow one day with that damn boat on my head and falling asleep while running, only to wake up about forty yards ahead of the last place I remembered. The power of the human mind is truly amazing.

And then, that night, it happened.

Every few hours, students received medical checks to ensure they’re not doing any grave harm to their bodies. Of course, “grave” is a subjective term. At this point, though, having made it this far into hell week, students were more inclined to hide their injuries for fear of being “rolled back” to another class, and having to start over after their injuries healed.

Well, I pulled the short straw this particular med check.

On Tuesday night of hell week I was rolled out of the class for a femoral stress fracture, and all hopes and dreams of becoming a SEAL were lost.

You gotta be fucking kidding me! I thought to myself. I was devastated. It was absolute emotional turmoil thinking that my life’s purpose was not going to be realized. I will never forget sitting in the chow hall on Wednesday morning, just hours after being rolled back, and seeing my class—and even worse, my boat crew—filter through the chow line like a pack of wild dogs scavenging the only food left. They looked like zombies. I had just slept for the first time since Sunday, which helped settle my mind, but they had not. I could see the difference in how I felt and how the class looked even after just a few hours of sleep. The thought that my career, life objective, and personal being were out of my control was incredibly challenging to face. For a long time after being rolled back I always wondered, “Why?”

Why did this happen? I know I can make it through BUD/S.

What am I supposed to learn or gain from this setback?

It was not until years later—after a few more incidents—that the answer was revealed, as the upcoming chapters will show.

Lessons Learned

Serving others who believe in service is important to me, as it is what has compelled me to pursue the achievements in life, and to write this damn book. But the next sequence of events turned out to be a little more stressful.

Everything that occurs in life, both good and bad, forces you to learn and shapes who you are. My dad once told me that the difference between you now and you twenty years from now is the places you’ll go and the people you’ll meet. Boy, was he right.

The guys I met in my new BUD/S class were incredible, and are still my closest friends and the best people I will ever know. Hell, one became my brother-in-law, which is a whole other story. Another close friend (and his unfortunate death) set me on my path to where I am now—writing about purpose and service because that is why I believe he existed and why our friendship was so tight.

To be passionate about something is to believe in the meaning that you anticipate it to deliver—whatever that meaning is—and to possess an intense desire to continue into the fray. Purpose and passion are two opposing forces that seem to work synergistically or individually, either on your behalf or against your best interest. Passion drives you, whereas purpose pulls you. Purpose can tug you along in its direction when passion subsides and thus allow you to endure amidst uncertainty, conflict, or fear. Purpose and passion can both be your friends and your fatal enemies.

To be passionate about something is to wake up everyday with the intention of living life to the fullest because your passion drives you; it offers constant and immediate feedback that you are on the right path—your path—toward attaining your objective, until you finally get there and your potential is realized.

When you’re passionate about your job, your life, and your relationships, you become more committed and proactively seek more ways to learn, engage, and find solutions. Because your purpose fuels you, you are more willing to face conflict or potential failure—again—because you value the learning opportunities that evolve either way.

Currituck, NC 2008: “Damnit, not again!”

Currituck is about a forty-five minute drive from Dam Neck, Virginia, where I was based, so oftentimes we would rent a plane and schedule a few days to go down to the airfield and practice high altitude, low opening (HALO) and high altitude, high opening (HAHO) parachute jumps. We would go through the jumpmaster brief that covered the sequence of events for the day, identify the roles and responsibilities for all personnel involved, and review the mishap procedures for parachute malfunctions—something that I always paid attention to because I never considered myself a stellar jumper.

After the brief, we all donned our parachutes, crammed into the plane, and sat “nut to butt,” as Navy guys supposedly like to do, and climbed to fifteen thousand feet for a HALO jump. We dove out and performed the sexy maneuvers in the air that we had planned. At about five thousand feet, we separated so as to create distance between both our parachutes and ourselves, to avoid bunching up on each other and causing traffic collisions in the air. You want space between you and other jumpers when you “throw out,” or pull the parachute’s ripcord, because the last thing you want is to be right on top of somebody after their parachute inflates. The more space you have to maneuver, the better.

After clearing my airspace for other jumpers, I went to pull the ripcord, break the burble to allow my ’chute to catch wind, and proceeded to keep falling…and falling…and falling. Normally, when the ripcord is pulled, the parachute deploys and inflates within a few seconds. But these few seconds had passed without the expected jolt, and I realized there was a significant problem.

My parachute didn’t open.

Fuuuuck!

Not only did my parachute not open, but there wasn’t any indication whatsoever that it was even close to opening. This was not a good thing.

I glanced back over my shoulder to try and identify the problem. Holy shit, I got a pack closure. A pack closure is a complete parachute malfunction in which the pack tray that holds the parachute remains closed. It is the absolute worst failure that can happen and perfectly fitting for my sort of luck.

As I continued falling and the trees below me became larger and larger, I immediately went to the emergency procedures (EPs) outlined in the jumpmaster brief. EPs are the procedures a jumper executes if the main parachute fails to operate, and are identified by two different colored tabs on a jumper’s chest harness. Pulling one tab will activate a severing mechanism inside the pack tray to “cut away” the main chute, while pulling the other tab will activate the reserve chute. It’s important to do them in sequence so you don’t inflate your reserve parachute into the main and cause even more problems for yourself. There is actually a technical term for this sort of malfunction, it’s called: “Getting fucked.”

From the time it took me to initiate emergency procedures to the time my reserve parachute actually opened, a lot of things passed through my mind. The first was, “Holy-shit-I’m-gonna-die.” The second was the fact that I was falling over a wooded area with dense trees, and so naturally the scene from First Blood popped into my mind, when Sylvester Stallone was hanging on the face of a cliff in an attempt to outrun the cops until he decided to jump off the cliff and into a cluster of treetops, with the hopes of the branches breaking his fall.

Of course Rambo survived because, well, he was Rambo. But I was Jeff Boss, and I was plummeting to the earth at 170 mph from 15,000 feet. Needless to say, I wasn’t going to bounce. I remember feeling my heart pound through my chest because the reserve chute was supposed to open instantaneously but, of course, it didn’t. It probably opened at about 1,500 feet and when it did, I felt like I had just resurfaced from underwater to breathe fresh air after an agonizingly long underwater swim. The good news was that I managed to steer clear of the trees below and right into a cornfield—which was actually a step up from a night jump I did in Arizona years earlier where I landed in a cactus and broke my nose. When my feet finally touched ground, I just laid there on my back for a good five minutes, with arms sprawled out to my sides as if I were making a snow angel, thinking to myself, “Ho…ly…shit. Ho…ly…shit. Ho…ly…shit…”

What did I learn from this? Not a damn thing, apparently, because I returned to the drop zone and immediately packed my chute to catch the next lift up.

However, this time I had some parachute riggers watch me pack just to mitigate any chance of operator error. Then, just before we boarded the caravan for takeoff, I partnered with a teammate nicknamed Badger because he was experienced, proficient, and as solid as any SEAL operator could aspire to be. I wanted him to watch my flying position for any tweaks, imbalances, or recommendations. When we landed, Badger gave me the “thumbs up” signal, which meant a lot coming from him, and we eventually boarded for a third jump.

Then it happened. Again.

The third jump that day was about as fun as the first. I went to pull the ripcord to deploy the canopy and instead of hearing the canopy deploy I heard…crickets…crickets. Nothing. This time it was a bag lock—a full malfunction where only the bag in which the parachute is stuffed deploys from the container, but the chute itself stays packed—another less-than-desirable malfunction that you really can’t fight your way out of. So, I initiated yet another cutaway procedure for the day. Damnit, not again, I thought to myself. I had performed more cutaways in that single day than some professional skydivers do in their entire careers—a little fun fact that I’m not very proud of. I don’t remember where I landed but it certainly wasn’t anywhere cool—more annoying than anything. Strangely, they weren’t my last cutaways, either.

You might think that only a crazy person would live through multiple parachute malfunctions in one day and not quit on the spot. You’re probably right. But something kept me coming back: it was my passion to stay with The Pack, and this wasn’t the last time that my passion to stay with The Pack would be tested.

“The Pack” refers to a sense of belonging and unity that binds special operators together. It’s a product of living, training, and fighting side by side; like the Spartans who used to carry a shield in the Phalanx less for their own protection than for that of the man next to them, it’s a distinction that blurs the line between self and other, or between individual and team. But to be excluded from The Pack is to go through life with poor direction, little meaning, and a lack of fulfillment. When you have passion, you can easily answer “why.” You wake up in the morning and go to work, and it’s because the thought of answering your “why?” motivates you: because The Pack is there waiting for you.

Without direction, cause, zest, or “fire in the gut,” the greater the opportunities open for regret, self-doubt, and despair—and they invade your mind because you begin to question what you do and why you do it. If you’re passionate about your job, your relationships, and your hobbies, then the only thing that slows you down when challenge or hardship present themselves is the time it takes to reflect, learn, and move on. This answers the question of how, and why, you can keep jumping when your parachute keeps failing. When you are driven by passion and purpose, and guided by the emotional willingness to reflect, mental ability to learn, and spiritual capability of leaving it all behind to move on, you have all of the tools that you need to overcome adversity, and come out stronger on the other side

Purpose and passion go hand-in-hand no matter what role you’re in, be it business, everyday life, or one’s family. There can be no enthusiasm, no fervor, no meaning, and no happiness without answering the why of your pursuits.

How to “Steal” Passion

Passion and purpose have always been strong motivators for me right behind not getting shot—again. There must be an equal balance of the two to achieve optimal results, because a passion without purpose is akin to an untamed fire hose—it just sprays everything in its path with no direction, no guidance. Similarly, purpose without the passion to support it is the very feeling of creative tension we experience when we know what we want but take no action to “get there.” It’s this latter predicament that proves unsettling—to be in the driver’s seat, map in hand, coffee mug full…and an empty tank of gas (“Where are you going? Nowhere!”).

I contend that passion may be found by mirroring the artist. Think about it. Artists must be truly passionate about their work because it’s all or nothing. They either love the painting they just created, or they tear up the canvas and start anew. There is constant refinement, never-ending improvement, and a perpetual desire to look for inspiration at every minute of the day. What a way to live, right?!

Leaders are no different. Leaders require both purpose and passion to inspire others because both are infectious, social contagions that spread like laughter or a bad case of herpes (yup, I said it).

Of course, being passionate is easier said than done, so let’s look at what artists must do to achieve their desired optimal state—and how we can steal it: